Kazin was deeply affected by his peers' subsequent disillusion with liberalism. Adam Kirsch writes in The New Republic that "having invested his romantic self-image in liberalism, Kazin perceived abandonment of liberalism by his peers as an attack on his identity".[2]

His son is historian and Dissent co-editor Michael Kazin. His daughter is Cathrael Kazin, Chief Academic Officer of College for America at Southern New Hampshire University. Kazin was married four times and is survived by his widow, the writer Judith Dunford.